Spokesperson Janfrie Wakim said the show would be in breach of a cultural boycott supported by 170 Palestinian groups.

In a Facebook post Itzhak Gerberg has invited the singer to a “friendly meeting” to talk it over.

Mr Gerberg says by succumbing to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, Lorde is encouraging animosity in the region.

“Music should unite not divide,” the post read.

“Reactions driven by hatred lead to continued #conflict. But solutions come from engagement and lead to compromise, co-operation, and #peace.”

A fair argument.

The US-based Simon Wiesenthal Centre, which campaigns against antisemitism, said the fact Lorde still plans to tour Russia illustrates the hypocrisy of the international community towards the region’s only democracy.

Also a fair point – it would be possible to find someone who could justify a boycott of performances in many different countries.

As incredible as it may sound in 2014, there is considerable evidence that Springsteen unwittingly helped bring the Berlin Wall down with the biggest, most riveting earth-shaking concert in the history of East Germany.

It all happened 16 months before the Wall fell in July 1988, and the biggest crowd Springsteen ever played before watched him perform in the East Berlin district of Weissensee on a giant meadow. Springsteen worked his magic there in front of a crowd of 300,000 people — only half of whom had tickets. The other half simply stormed the gates and got away with it.

Not only did Springsteen have ecstatic East Germans screaming their lungs out while singing “Born in the USA,” he also opened his four-hour long concert defiantly with “Badlands,” a song that East Germans might have felt referred to their country, and he later played “Chimes of Freedom” right after delivering a courageous short speech calling for the wall to be torn down. For East Germans locked up behind the Berlin Wall it was an unforgettable address and an incredibly liberating moment — an American rock star telling 300,000 people that he came to play for them in the hope that “one day the barriers will be torn down.”

And 16 months later, the Berlin Wall was gone.

Could Lorde help precipitate historic change in Jerusalem and in the Middle East?

Patzcuaro

Gezza

Not sure why so many people think Bruce Springstein’s Born in the USA is an anthem praising the place.

Born down in a dead man’s town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
End up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up

Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.
I was born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A.

Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man
Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A.

Come back home to the refinery
Hiring man said “son if it was up to me”
Went down to see my V.A. man
He said “son, don’t you understand”

I had a brother at Khe Sahn
Fighting off the Viet Cong
They’re still there, he’s all gone
He had a woman he loved in Saigon
I got a picture of him in her arms now

Down in the shadow of the penitentiary
Out by the gas fires of the refinery
I’m ten years burning down the road
Nowhere to run ain’t got nowhere to go

Born in the U.S.A., I was born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., I’m a long gone daddy in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., born in the U.S.A.
Born in the U.S.A., I’m a cool rocking daddy in the U.S.A.

Corky

Bruce is always free to fugg off to Africa if he wants. However, I think the American dream will see him domiciled in the US. He’s been so lucky. Hell, he’s even free to diss the president. Do that in the Congo, and he’d wind up in the Congo River as Piranha bait.

Kitty Catkin

duperez

People are free to interpret things their own way. As they are doing with Lorde.
Some of them don’t give a fuck about what Lorde means by her actions. Some do.
Some interpret things their own way then get all emotional and judgemental.

PartisanZ

robertguyton

“Sure, Israel is a democracy of sorts for Jewish Israelis. There are anomolies, such religious intermarriage being outlawed. This does contravene the notion of basic freedoms and resembles the old segregation seen in the Southern States of the US and the former apartheid regime in South Africa. There are also no civil divorce rights in Israel only religious bodies can rule on divorce, and there are numerous other democratic shortcomings, but for Jews many of the features of a democracy do exist. For the 1.4 million Palestinian and other Arab populations in Israel the democracy is very second rate. They face discrimination that is among the worse by Western standards. But all the limitations of democratic rights in Israel pale in comparison to the brutal military occupation carried out by the Israeli state for the past 50 years over the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank.”https://rdln.wordpress.com/2017/12/27/israel-is-the-only-democracy-that-throws-children-in-military-prisons-and-leave-them-there/